Intro to user groups

Handshake supports user groups, which give account administrators the ability to restrict customers (and their orders), in addition to manufacturer lines, to be only visible to certain users. User groups is part of Handshake Professional.

This is crucial for sales teams where individual reps should not see each other's customers or orders and it is only the account administrator or sales manager who should have complete visibility of the entire customer base.

Keep in mind that all users are given Master user privelages (visibility across all reps, orders, and manufacturer lines) until placed in a user groups with set restrictions. If a master user writes an order for a customer already assigned to a user group, the order will be assigned to the corresponding user group. This ensures that sales reps have complete visibility into their accounts.

Even if you do not want to restrict access to certain customers for your users, user groups are a handy way to indicate which reps are supposed to take care of each customer.

How do user groups work?

Handshake's user group system is a simple hierarchy. Each user on your account is placed into a group, and users can only see customers which are assigned to their group, or one of the sub-groups underneath their group.

A sample user group tree courtesy of our friends at Dunder Mifflin

Let's work through the example above from bottom to top:

Andy and Ryan are junior sales reps in the California area and they are only supposed to see their own customers, hence they are both in a group by themselves (referred to sometimes as a "private group").

Jim is the sales manager for California and therefore he is placed into the California group directly. He can see any customers that are assigned to the California user group as well as any that are assigned to Andy's or Ryan's groups.

Dwight is the sales manager for Hawaii but since there are no junior salespeople in Hawaii, there are no subgroups here. Dwight can see any customers that are assigned to the Hawaii user group.

Michael is the CEO of the company and is placed into the Master group. Because it contains all other groups, Michael has complete access to every customer in the system.